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METHODS of MANAGEMENT
The UNITED NATIONS
Massive responsibilities ... and rather little financing to do the work.
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DEVELOPMENT GOALS
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Goals are widely used in the UN system as a management methodology, though it is not clear whether they are effective.
My experience carrying out 'monitoring and evaluation' assignments for the UN for a period of around 20 years in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that development success and failure had very little linkage to how goals were articulated at the top of the UN system or at the top of individual countries. Rather success depended on the relevance of the development initiative to the place, and the people involved with the work, both local and international. Project design also played an important role as well as the availability of funding in an adequate amount and on a timely basis.
A lot of effort went into launching the MDGs in 2000 and even more effort went into the development and launch of the SDGs in 2015. From a 'management' perspective, goals are one part of a management process, and in the whole scheme of things, not a particularly important part. Many other parts of the development process have great impact on outcomes.
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MDGs
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
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SDGs
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
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The MDGs were implemented from 2000 to 2015. The total globe reported substantial socio-economic progress in total, but this was very much distorted by the progress of China which offset the lack of progress in many other countries.
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The SDGs were formulated in 2015 to provide a development framework until 2030. There are almost twice as many goals ... 17 SDGs versus just 8 MDGs. It is not apparent yet whether the SDGs are going to be more or less effective than the MDGs.
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MDGs - MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
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SDGs - SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
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The 17 Sustainable Development Goals were launched by the United Nations in 2015 together with more than 120 indicators of progress as a replacement for the NDGs. An important criticism of the SDGs is that they represent discontinuity from the MDGS to the SDGs and too much of an opportunity to lose much of the momentum that was in place for the MDGs.
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There are 17 goals, and around 200 targets and indicators ... and more than 100 countries ... that is around 35,000 numbers to track.
There is essentially no management mechanism anywhere in the official development assistance (ODA) ecosystem to overseas progress and performance.
Worse ... there is little or no clarity about how the goals should be implemented and especially little financing to do the work.
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